


it’s just like falling snow

by verecundiam



Series: kept promises [3]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Character Study, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I hate the real name tags, Light Injuries, Some angst, big brother bad appreciation zone, dream can and will fight the world for his friends, elaborates on some stuff I didn’t go into in the first fic, george is a street rat and it’s a vibe, sapnap gets to be reflective and also gets the love and appreciation he deserves, sbi are mentioned like twice, they each get a chapter!, they’re a family your honor!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:41:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28153290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verecundiam/pseuds/verecundiam
Summary: They were four kids that werewanted,even if it was only by each other.(a continuation ofkept promises and old ruins and names carved into stone,a muffinteers found family fic! highly recommend you read that fic before this one, I reference a lot of events from it)
Relationships: Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound & Darryl Noveschosch & Sapnap, Zak Ahmed & Darryl Noveschosch
Series: kept promises [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2039066
Comments: 76
Kudos: 315





	1. ghost

**Author's Note:**

> _what’s it like? the children ask_   
>  _it’s just like falling snow_   
>  _I am above you_   
>  _and I love you_   
>  _don’t you know_
> 
> (as always, this is about the Characters, not the People!)

Dream doesn’t remember a lot about his parents. He’s not sure if it’s just been too long or if he forcibly shoved the memories down, buried them too deep to recover, but—whoever they were, they’re gone now. 

He remembers being five years old, and two great, dark shadows looming over him. He remembers, clear as can be, _“Stay right here, okay? We’re just going to run some errands. We’ll be right back, I promise. Do you promise you’ll stay here?”_

And that’s it. That’s all he has, and sometimes he wishes he didn’t even have that much. 

(He spent two days waiting on that bench before someone noticed he was there, before someone asked about his parents, before they told him they’d left the village the day before. Left him there.)

So really, his life starts when they bring him to the orphanage. They don’t like him there. The caretaker’s a frazzled older woman who can’t afford to take on yet another child, and Dream’s parents didn’t even have the courtesy to die. There’s no funeral, no pitiful _“I’m so sorry,”_ no little kid to comfort. Just Dream, unwanted. 

The other kids don’t want him around either. He doesn’t blame them. If even his parents didn’t want him, why should they? 

So he runs. He gets really good at running, jumping, hiding. He’s almost impossible to catch. But it’s two years before they stop bringing him back. (Why do they keep bringing him back? He’s trying to make it easier on them, not harder. They don’t want him, and he doesn’t want them right back. Just leave him alone. Just leave him alone.)

He gets left alone for two more years. He takes what he needs and he runs and he hides, he’s the ghost of a child in the shadows of alleyways and wheat fields. 

And then he’s nine years old and there’s a boy on a bench. 

And he’s on the bench for a long, long time. It’s a different bench, but Dream feels deja-vu rattle him all the same. 

He takes his favorite stick and he sits on the ground next to the boy. He’s young, with shoulder-length dark hair falling in front of his face and too-big boots, all alone on the park bench. It makes him seem small.

He’s nice. He doesn’t look at Dream weird for his makeshift bandages and threadbare clothes and favorite stick. He doesn’t believe Dream when he tells him what’s happening. Dream offers him a place anyway. He doesn’t know why. Dream’s leaving so he can be left alone. 

(Maybe it’s because the boy is nice. Maybe it’s because Dream can’t remember having friends before. Maybe it’s because he looks so small on that bench and Dream remembers feeling like that, five years old and cold but so, so certain it was going to be over soon.)

His name is Sapnap, and he’s seven, and he meets Dream at the outskirts of the village with a strange look on his face. Dream feels sad in a way he wasn’t expecting to, because he was right. This is what he said would happen. (But maybe he’d hoped to be wrong.)

He doesn’t talk about it. They don’t talk about it for a long time. Dream just takes Sapnap’s hand, out of an instinct he didn’t know he had, and starts rambling about something as they walk away—away from the village that didn’t want them anyway, into the forest, welcoming and frightening all at once.

\------------

Dream may be a ghost, but Sapnap isn’t, and that becomes increasingly clear with every passing day. 

He makes Dream laugh like he’s never laughed before, until he can’t breathe, has to sit down while Sapnap grins at him proudly. He teaches Dream how to start a campfire while Dream shows him how to find lucky rocks and favorite sticks to make into weapons. He smiles like Dream’s never seen someone smile before, all brilliance and pride. 

He’s more alive than anyone Dream’s ever known. 

(He’s still so small, though. Dream pulls him into treetops at night because he can’t quite climb them yet, and Dream tucks him into his side and lays an arm across him, because nothing, _nothing_ is going to hurt him anymore. Not if Dream has anything to say about it.)

\------------

Dream’s not actually all that good at fighting. He’s fast and he’s quiet and it’s a lot easier to just grab Sapnap’s hand and pull him along until they’ve lost whatever’s chasing them, or they find a good tree to hop up into. 

_You fight like a badger,_ Sapnap laughs after Dream shoves his sharpened stick through a spider’s brain. And it’s kind of true—he only fights when he has to, when there’s no way out—and then he fights and he keeps fighting, tooth and nail. Like a cornered animal.

It’s how they survive the night that Bad found them. They ran and ran and ran and ran because running usually works, it usually works, but Sapnap collapses to the ground coughing and his hand is nearly torn from Dream’s, and Dream’s not that far behind, legs shaking dangerously, breath rattling in his lungs, so he pushes Sapnap behind him and presses them both against a tree trunk, and the zombies are upon them. 

And it’s all that Dream can do to keep them off of Sapnap, kicking and screaming and shoving with his stick, and he turns his head to the side and he hears cries from behind him as he takes a clawed hand to the face that was meant for Sapnap’s throat, and then another and another and he can barely even see through the blood running down his face but he growls and shoves the zombie off of him. 

Without even really registering what he’s doing, shaking with rage and terror and pain, he makes sure that Sapnap’s still behind him, and then drives his sharpened stick through a zombie’s eye, through another’s rib cage. They claw at him and he claws right back. 

(And it will be years down the line, once he is trained and skilled and learned that he loves to fight when it’s on his own terms, that Technoblade brings out that cornered-animal fury in him again. And Technoblade will grin, and he’ll match it with his own.)

When the zombies are dead, he stumbles back, and Sapnap reaches for him with a bitten-off cry and Dream pulls him in, and Sapnap curls into his side like he always does and presses his face into Dream’s shirt. Dream puts an arm in front of him and with the other points his bloodied stick with bloodied hands at the night surrounding them and the figure approaching them, holding a torch up high.

\------------

And here’s the thing: Dream only goes with Bad because he doesn’t want to die. Because the blood running down his face is a beacon for all the other mobs in the area. 

Dream doesn’t even believe Bad when he promises not to hurt them. He doesn’t believe in promises, not then. He just doesn't want to die. He doesn't want Sapnap to die. 

(He thinks about that moment a lot, in the years that pass. One single decision that shaped his life forever. Deciding to trust a stranger against all his nine-year-old better judgement, and the domino effect that followed. The family that followed. He can hardly believe it, some days.)

\------------

Sapnap remembers more about his parents than Dream ever will. Maybe it’s because he was older than Dream was when they left, maybe it’s because he’s Sapnap and he’s braver than Dream will ever be. Brave enough to hold onto the memories even if they burn. 

It takes Sapnap almost a year to really ever talk about it. They’re with Bad, now, and things are better. Dream hadn’t thought things could ever be better, and running and hiding are so ingrained in him that he needs a mask to hide his face, to keep people from looking at him too much. (The mask was never about the scars, but he can pretend like it is.) 

But things are better. Bad is—Bad’s a lot of things, but the first thing that comes to Dream’s mind, always, is _good_. Bad is good. Dream’s amazed by it, by the way that Bad made a collection of old crumbling ruins into a home, by the way that he talks to and laughs with and teaches him and Sapnap like they’ve always been there. Like this is where they belong. 

_(That’s because it is,_ Bad says. _If you want it to be.)_

They’re sitting around their campfire. It’s getting late, and it’s already dark out. The forest surrounding them always makes the thickest shadows, like you could reach out and touch them. (Maybe they’re long-lost relatives of Bad. That would be kinda funny.) 

Dream can hear the groans and rattles and hisses of monsters, but the walls in this bit of ruin are high, and they once spent a whole day setting up torches around the place. It’s safe. That doesn’t stop Dream from shivering, absentmindedly tracing the scar tissue on the side of his face. 

He doesn’t notice that Sapnap is humming until he’s already half-asleep, knees tucked against his chest. Someone put a blanket over his shoulders without him realizing. 

“Whatcha singing?” Bad asks, wiping down their bowls with water taken from the stream. 

Sapnap abruptly stops, eyes widening, like he hadn’t even realized it himself. “Oh,” he says. “Um. Nothing. Just um, just a song. My uh, my mom used to sing it.” 

“Oh,” Bad looks up, surprised. “That’s very nice.” 

“Not really,” Sapnap shrugs, and he looks back down at the fire. Dream shifts over so he’s sitting all the way next to him, at a loss for what else to do, because he looks a lot like he did when Dream first met him on the edge of town. Sapnap falls against him, easily curling into his side like they’re back in the forest and Dream’s trying to protect him from everything, except it’s not monsters this time. 

“I dunno why she bothered with it,” Sapnap whispers. “If she was just gonna—you know.”

Dream knows. Bad doesn’t, shouldn’t, because they haven’t talked about it at all, but he’s observant. He probably put two-and-two together at some point. 

“It’s pretty,” Bad offers. “Whatever she did it for, at least you have a song.” 

“That’s true,” Sapnap murmurs into Dream’s shoulder. “It’s a good song.” 

\------------

He brings them up a bit more, after that. Not very often, because the memories burn, but he does.

He mentions, offhandedly, that it was his dad that taught him how to start a campfire. His mom used to make little travel biscuits with just flour and water. He had a house, when he was really, really little, but it got attacked. He can’t remember if it was a creeper or pillagers, but it was one of the two. He had a stuffed panda bear that he loved more than anything, but he lost it in the attack. 

(Bad gets him a stuffed panda bear for his eighth birthday, and it rarely leaves his side for years.)

Dream isn’t sure why all of those little bits and pieces feel so important. Why should it matter? Why do these sharp-edged memories matter at all, when the people who made them are gone, when they weren’t ever really there at all? 

They do matter, though. Matter in the same way that Bad teaching them to fight and survive and live matters. Matter in the same way that Bad giving Sapnap a stuffed animal matters. They matter in the same way that the voices echoing _I promise, I promise_ in the back of his mind matter, an ever-present reminder that he can’t seem to shake. They matter in the same way that Bad pulling Dream into a hug for the first time matters, because they’re memories that he holds onto with everything he has, even if he doesn’t know why.

\------------

Dream doesn’t want to remember much about where he came from, he thinks. All he has are shadows and two broken promises. Sharp-edged memories he can’t seem to bury, that he’s not even sure he wants to bury. That’s enough. Plenty. 

He takes the mask off, flips it around. Traces the ridges of the dried paint where Sapnap made the smiley face. The cold night air hits his face at the same time as the warmth from the dying campfire, and he pulls the blanket closer around his shoulders. 

He puts the mask back on. Takes a deep breath. 

It was never about the scars. Dream’s just the untethered ghost of a child, running and running and running and brought to a halt by a grinning kid left behind just like him and a shadow with his hand outstretched. And if they can’t see him, then it’s easier to stay. It’s that much simpler to take the outstretched hand and maybe, maybe, maybe believe that this is going to turn out okay. As long as they can’t see how scared he is. Or how hopeful he is. 

He takes the mask off again. 

Nothing changes, not really.


	2. ready, aim, fire

It’s laughably easy for George to disappear into the crowd. In a city this big, even nighttime isn’t enough to stop the bustling foot traffic. 

No one cares about a ten-year-old kid with a blue backpack full of everything he could take and a bow that’s nothing more than a stick and a string. 

(Especially not the house he’s running from.)

It’s even easier to hitch a ride with the next outgoing caravan of traders. Just sit by the llamas and look sad. It helps that he looks years younger than he is, that he’s small and slight and skinny, that he knows just how to look up through his hair with big brown eyes and be pitiable. 

He gets a free ride to the next city as long as he helps take care of the llamas. Works just fine for him. 

\------------

He starts to realize that he didn’t think this all the way through when the traders drop him off. He’s got no food, no money, no home, and no way to get any of those things. 

Unless…

\------------

The thing about George is that he knows how to read people. He’s observant to the point of oversensitivity—he has to be. He wouldn’t be here otherwise, he’d still be trapped back in that house. (He’d rather face hunger and cold in this unknown city of strangers a million times than ever go back there.)

So it’s a simple matter of scanning the bustling crowd and looking, watching. He learns how to pickpocket like that. He never even speaks to one of his fellow lost kids, just watches the way that they bump against someone and dash around a corner, looks for nimble fingers and different escape methods, for what works and what doesn’t. And then he mimics it, first practicing just bumping against people—

(He hates it at first. Hates being surrounded on all sides, people pressing in on him. He likes small spaces, actually—but he likes those spaces to be solid, like hiding under a bed or in a cabinet or in a corner. This is overwhelming, too much noise in his ears muddled into static and oppressive jostling.)

(He gets used to it.)

—And then he starts with small things. Pouches of two or three emeralds, apples off of market stands. Then bigger things, ingots out of blacksmith shops and crops out of fields. 

And he doesn’t get caught. It’s almost incredible. Even when he does get found out, it’s a simple matter to sprint down planned escape routes, through back roads and alleyways he’s long since memorized. 

When they start to recognize his face, he knows it’s time to move on. He takes his blue backpack and his brand-new bow and tears the wanted poster off of the corkboard in the main square. It’s not even a good likeness.

And he moves forward. Always forward.

\------------

The next merchant caravan he travels with is wealthier than the last, and harsher, too. They pick him up because he’s going to do work, not because he’s a sad little kid with big brown eyes. That’s fine. 

(He snags a few of their emeralds every time they tell him to go faster. That’s fine, too. He doesn’t think they even notice.)

\------------

Ready, aim, fire. 

Glass bottles are set up haphazardly behind an old blacksmith building, where no one can hear him over the roar of furnaces and hammering metal. 

The arrow flies from his grasp, and the string whips forward to slap the skin of his forearm. He winces, and the slight movement is just enough to send the arrow careening off-course. 

He curses, and draws another arrow. Stops. Digs through his backpack to see if there’s something, anything in there for his burning fingertips and stinging forearm. 

There’s nothing for his fingertips, but he does have an old, too-small t-shirt he can tear into thick shreds and tie around his arm. That’ll work just fine. 

Ignoring the way his fingers are starting to go numb, he nocks the arrow. Lets it fly.

This one flies true, and it hits the empty bottle, knocks it off its perch with a crash—

\------------

_The vase hits the floor and it shatters into a thousand pieces, and he scoots farther into his corner so his bare feet don’t touch any of the jagged ceramic. His hands are pressed over his ears but it’s not helping at all and his eyes are wide-open but staring at the floor and all he can see is knife-sharp bits of vase and his father’s booted feet and his mother’s slippered ones, and he hears yelling yelling yelling yelling and he tucks his legs to his chest and buries his head and presses his hands harder against his ears, and it doesn’t help, it never helps, it never stops—_

\------------

—Stop it. That’s not important. Move. Keep moving. Forward-forward-forward, ready, aim, fire. 

Come on. 

Now’s not the time. 

Pull yourself together. 

Ready, aim, fire. 

He lets another arrow fly, and it shatters the glass bottle on impact. 

\------------

He’s been to five different cities by the time that he’s twelve, and it’s about then when he starts travelling alone.

He likes the woods, kinda. They’re pretty, but they’re quiet, and he doesn’t know what to do with quiet. He’s never really—never really been surrounded by quiet, like this. 

It’s… uncomfortable. The white noise of crowds and busy people and horses clip-clopping and llamas calling out to each other is familiar, like an old blanket. Out here, he’s got what—birds? Birds are okay and all, but they’re not exactly filling the air around him. There are squirrels? Kind of? 

George sighs. It’s not loud enough to fill the silence. 

\------------

He’s never really minded being alone.

Hadn’t thought about it at all, actually. He’s alone because that’s how it is. He’s got folded-up wanted posters in his backpack and a bunch of old stuff from his house he doesn’t need, he has trinkets in his pockets that he doesn’t know why he took, he’s got the nimble fingers of a pickpocket, the calloused ones of an archer, he always goes forward, and he’s always alone. 

He watches people instead of talking to them. Analyzes places instead of living in them. He doesn’t stick around long enough to make any friends, and he’s not all that interested anyway. He goes quiet, and that’s just fine. 

He moves on. 

That’s how it is. 

\------------

He knows it’s time to keep going when there are wanted posters up for him. They never look quite right. He always looks older in them. Ironic, considering it’s the fact that he looks so young that gets him places half the time. Is it because they’ve never seen him clearly, that they just assume he’s older? Or do they want people to think he’s older so that no one feels bad for trying to catch him? 

It doesn’t matter. He stuffs the wanted posters in his backpack with all the rest, and he finds another city full of strangers. 

Everyone’s a stranger, nowadays. 

\------------

He’s almost fourteen when he ends up at a small town, half-frozen and half-starved in the middle of the night. 

He’d made the mistake of moving on from his last city and following a few miles behind a caravan. Not like a map’s easy to take, so it was the best he could do when there wasn’t an easy road to follow. 

Apparently, they were in for a longer journey than George had thought, because he’d run out of his stocked-up food two weeks in and they were still walking. He briefly considered asking to join them, but—well, then he’d have to reveal he’d been using them as a personal compass, and then he’d have to talk to them, and it was—it was more than he was willing to deal with. 

So he skirted the outside of the caravan, only daring to get close at night, where he’d snatch leftover meat from their fires, or old, stale bread—even a jar of honey, once. 

They passed through the town—more a village, really—but George stayed behind. He really, really needs to restock. 

Which is a simple matter, of course. 

Uuuuuntil he realizes that there is no crowd. Even the next day, after a freezing night out along the side of the tiny library building, there’s barely anybody out. Nowhere for him to hide. There’s hardly even alleyways for him to duck into. 

He’s—he’s exposed, he’s out in the open, like he’s caught out in deep winter without a coat and it’s _freezing._

(Stop it. Stop it. That’s not important. Food’s important. You need rations. You don’t want to starve, do you?)

There’s a bakery. That’ll work just fine. The wheat field behind it would probably be easier to take from, but George has never baked anything in his life and he doesn’t plan on starting now. 

\------------

Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the best idea. 

Sue him, he was desperate. 

But of course, the baker saw him stuff his bag full of loaves, and now the iron golem and half the village is after him. 

Lucky for him, there’s a stack of hay bales in one of the few alleys in this place. If they can’t find him, they can’t murder him. That’s a proven fact. (Would they kill him? It certainly seems like they would.)

What he doesn’t expect is for some other kid to dash into the hay with him. He doesn’t even notice George at first, too busy making sure he can’t be seen, but he eventually spots that the hay is _already inhabited, thank you very much._

He can’t really tell how old the kid is, because he’s wearing a weird, full-face mask, plain white except for the wobbly smiley face painted on the front. His sandy blonde hair already has so much hay in it. (George’s probably isn’t any better, but still.)

“Hey! This is _my_ hiding spot,” the kid whispers.

“Well, now it’s mine,” George can’t help but retort. 

“I was here first!” 

Not true! “You were not. I was absolutely here first.”

“No! No you weren’t!” The kid’s volume is rising, and with it, George’s anxiety. 

“Yes I was. Now shut up before we get seen.” 

Luckily, the kid takes the hint, and they both back further into the hay bales. For a brief moment, the only sound George can hear is his own breathing and the faint rustling of hay.

“Why are you hiding, anyway?” The kid turns to glance at him. It’s weird that George can’t see his expression. Uncomfortable. He can’t predict him like that, doesn’t know if this kid’s going to whip around and cut him open with the hatchet on his belt or give him a present and a hug. 

So all George says is, “Stole some bread.” He shrugs, helplessly, because that’s all it was. “Got caught.” And then for reasons he cannot fathom, he reaches into his bag and takes out one of the loaves, breaking the soft bread in half. “Want one?” 

“Uh… sure,” the kid gingerly takes it out of his hands, like he thinks it’s going to explode. It… didn’t really occur to him until that the kid might be just as wary of George as George is of him.

When the hay rustles and opens up into the bright afternoon sunlight, George startles, badly, and backs up against the building wall. This is it. They’ve got him. He’s going to get ripped to shreds by cold iron hands—

And it’s just another kid. Straight dark hair, dark eyes, a white headband tied across his forehead. The kid with the mask just sighs as the new kid cackles at the hay in his hair and hoodie. Okay, okay, so they know each other. Oh, duh. White mask, white headband. They match. 

“Haha, yes! Gotcha—wait, who’s this guy?” Headband kid just now notices him, and George has to resist backing further into the hay. 

“I dunno,” Mask kid shrugs, still eating the bread that George gave him. “Who’re you?”

“George,” he says, because there’s no harm in it. It might be the first time he’s told anyone his name in—in years, actually. 

“Cool,” says headband kid. 

“He’s being hunted down ‘cause he stole bread,” Mask kid says. Which—yeah. 

So George does the only thing he can think of. “Here,” he shoves the other half of the loaf of bread into headband kid’s hands. “Bread.” 

“Dream, he gave me food, I’d die for him now.” Headband kid—like he didn’t just nearly kill George right then and there with that sentence—pulls his friend up and out of the hay while George chokes. 

“I know right?” Mask kid—Dream?—turns around and holds out a hand, and it takes George a second to realize it’s for him. “Wanna come with? We’ve got a camp a bit away from here.” 

He very nearly says no. It’s a close thing. There’s no way that bread is enough to earn someone’s friendship enough that they trust him with bringing him home. 

But that home is away from the village that wants him dead. And they didn’t react with any kind of shock or horror when he literally outright told them that he stole bread. They just kind of accepted it? Is that normal? Or are these people just weird? Is he overthinking it? He’s definitely overthinking it. 

“Sure, I guess,” is what he ends up saying, and he take’s Dream’s outstretched hand. 

\------------

The walk back to their campsite is one of the most mystifying experiences of George’s life. It’s only a ten-minute walk, but he talks more than he has in years as they ask him random questions and make random jokes and push each other around and push George around, and it’s—it’s—he doesn’t even have a word for it. All he can do is start digging through his backpack of miscellaneous items, collected and stolen over the years, for a pair of old white goggles he knows he has somewhere. So he can match whatever theme they’ve got going on. 

There’s another one of them, too, a teenager with shadowy features and bright white eyes and a gentle sort of smile, and—

And—

And George stays _days_ longer than he meant to. 

He meant to leave after the first night. He meant to not impose on these people any longer than he had to. Instead he learns that they’re Dream and Sapnap and Bad, and that they make him laugh, and they don’t care about the bundle of wanted posters in his backpack. He makes a joke that’s not even that funny and it has Dream on the ground. He bickers with Sapnap and Sapnap bickers back just as much, and then it dissolves into shoving, and Bad pulls them apart and calls them _muffinheads_ while Dream cackles. 

He almost leaves. 

It’s the third night, and he’s been here too long. No doubt there’s wanted posters in the village for him, and that always means it’s time to go. 

It’s time to go.

He clutches his blue backpack in his arms, and he doesn’t take off the goggles.

Moving on on on on on, forward forward forward. Something like anxiety jitters underneath his skin, tells him to run, go, leave, he can’t stay any longer. Ready, aim, fire, make a decision. Standing here frozen is stupid. 

But moving on sounds—for the first time ever, it sounds awful. What’ll he do, in the next city of strangers? Pickpocket a few people to survive and then keep going? What’s even the point of that? He’s spent the past four years trying to get away, but he got away years ago, didn’t he? Why is he still running?

\------------

Sapnap asks him if he wants to stay, and he does. He does. He can hardly believe it, but he does. And when, years later, he’s handed a bit of scrap iron, he carves his name underneath Dream’s without hesitation. (This is home.)


	3. of shadows

Bad is six years old, and he is alone.

And that’s fine! That’s just fine. 

It’s not like he can remember his parents enough to miss them, and it’s not like he’s ever had any friends before, so he doesn’t even know the difference. And that’s—that’s fine. 

No one in the village will look at him. 

Did he do something wrong? That must be it. 

Well, whatever it was, he can fix it! 

\------------

Bad is seven years old when he learns there is nothing to fix.

He’s just a bad omen. Horns and shadow and light, all things that the villagers are scared of. Even his name is a bad omen. BadBoyHalo. Devil and angel. 

The villagers don’t want devils or angels. They just want peace. Bad can’t blame them for that. Maybe he should, but he—he can’t. 

\------------

And then Bad is eight years old, and there is a man with frostbitten skin and icicles for hair in the village.

“Are you allowed to be here?” Bad looks up at him, cocking his head.

“Are you?” The man retorts. 

“Technically no,” Bad says, as solemn as an eight-year-old can manage. “I just can’t live anywhere else.”

“Technically, then, I shouldn’t be here either,” the man winks. “I don’t know how much longer they’ll let me stay, but hey, I’ll take what I can get.”

Bad nods. “Me too. At least you look like a nice ice fairy or something. They all say I look unlucky.”

The man frowns. “Are... they gonna kick you out, kiddo?” 

“Dunno,” Bad shrugs. “Probably.”

“...Oh,” the man says. “That sucks. Where are you gonna go?”

Bad only shrugs again. 

“Geez,” the man shakes his head. “Alright. How ‘bout I show you some stuff? So if they end up banishing you to the wilderness or whatever, you’re not gonna die right away.”

“Okay! Cool,” says Bad.

\------------

Bad is ten years old, and the icy man is long gone but he knows how to fight and survive by the time that the villagers have had enough of the bad omen in their home. And then he finds the ruins, all crumbling and lonely, and they’re perfect. 

\------------

Bad is eleven, and he’s venturing into town for the first time in a long while. They said he could come for supplies. It’ll be fine. He just needs cookware. He’ll get all his own food, he just needs the pots and pans. It’ll be fine! It’ll be fine. 

The traders are in town, and the main square is bustling with tents and stalls in the way that this town hardly ever bustles. He tries keeping to the side edges, and it… mostly works. He just has to make sure his hood stays pulled up and he doesn’t make eye contact with anyone. Okay. 

Of course, that’s when he trips over something and falls right into someone’s stall. 

His bitten-off cry is muffled by the crowd, thankfully, but he can hear someone cackling from the stall he fell into. He gathers his courage and pulls himself up off of the cobblestones. 

“Didja have a good trip? ‘Cause we sure didn’t. It was raining most of the way here,” says the voice that was laughing at him. Bad looks up and is rather surprised to see a younger kid grinning down. He holds out a hand, and Bad reluctantly takes it, frowning. But he lets the kid pull him up. 

He has crystal patches travelling up the side of his face, and glimmering strands of blue are threaded through his hair. It coats nearly his entire hand, and Bad’s hand still feels cold when the kid releases it. 

“Sorry, that was kinda mean. I wasn’t trying to get you. I was aiming for—you see that guy over there?” The kid points over at—uh, Gerald, right? Gerald the farmer? He was one of the most superstitious villagers, and had been the most determined to pretend that Bad didn’t exist. 

“You mean Gerald?”

“Oh, you know him? Cool! Anyway, he was coming over here before, so I thought I’d catch him. He’s been real mean to a bunch of the caravan, and my parents are busy over there—” he gestures vaguely behind him—”so I just wanted to embarrass him a bit, y’know?” He holds up what had tripped Bad—just a small string, haphazardly tied across this section of the path. 

“You need better timing,” Bad grumbles, “but he does suck.”

“I know, right?” The kid exclaims, and then gasps. “Wanna help me get him?” 

“That sounds like a terrible idea.”

“But it would be so much fun.”

“...Okay. I’m in.”

“Awesome!” The kid cheers. “Oh, I’m Skeppy, by the way.” 

“Uh. I’m Bad.”

“Bad at keeping your balance, you mean?” 

“No! That’s my _name,_ you muffin—” 

“I was kidding! I was kidding—wait, what did you call me?”

\------------

Skeppy always has to leave, but he always comes back, too. He promises it, every time, and he hasn’t let Bad down yet.

\------------

And then Bad is twelve, and he finds two kids in the forest at night, angry and scared. One of them is trying desperately to protect the other behind him, and he’s bleeding, and Bad knows if he doesn’t do something that they’ll die. They’ll die. So he holds out a hand. 

And they stay. They stay, and Bad goes from a lonely stranger to a cautious caretaker to an older brother in a few weeks’ time. He’s not prepared for it. He learns fast, but he’s not prepared for it.

He’s not prepared to start gathering supplies for three people instead of one, or to find clothes and tools for smaller kids, or to teach them how to fight like he was taught years ago. He’s not prepared for the thrumming anxiety that plagues all three of them every time they’re apart. For the way that Sapnap goes quiet sometimes or Dream’s silent nightmares.

And he’s not prepared for the way that Sapnap latches onto you like a barnacle and won’t let go until you reciprocate, giggling, or the sheer warmth that Dream exudes with just a careful smile and a quiet _thank you_. He’s not prepared for the way his lonely ruins burst into brilliant life and laughter, for the crayon drawings taped on the walls and the songs and the games. And he’s not prepared for the viciously protective sort of feeling he gets when they go to the village, when he sees the way that Dream hunches in on himself and grips Sapnap’s hand with white knuckles, sees the way that Sapnap keeps close to Dream’s side and won’t talk above a whisper. He’s not prepared to keep them behind him, always, glaring out at the villagers that give them odd looks when before he would have just ignored it, always ignored it. He’s not prepared for the hugs and braided hair and held hands, the way that they look up at him and follow his lead and giggle when he ruffles their hair and messes it up. 

And he wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

\------------

Bad is thirteen, and Dream climbs up next to him and asks him why he was all alone, doesn’t even consider that Bad’s misty-dark skin and horns could be something other, something unlucky. 

He can’t quite get the words out right, can’t quite explain the devils and angels and bad omens. The way the icy man had to leave, chased by the iron golem, the way that Bad lived for years in the shadows that looked just like him. So he just explains the odd sort of agreement he has with the village and leaves it at that. 

It must bother Dream more than Bad thought it would, though, because the next time they head in for supplies, Dream’s fear and general jumpiness has been overcome by a sort of intensity that even his mask can’t hide. His arms are crossed, hands occasionally drifting to the hatchet at his side, standing as straight as he can. It takes Bad longer than he’d like to admit to realize it’s directed towards the people giving _Bad_ weird looks, not him and Sapnap. 

Bad knows better than to bring it up. But if he hugs Dream a little tighter that evening, neither of them are going to say anything. 

\------------

Bad is fifteen, and his little brothers bring home another one. He learns, immediately, that the new boy is turning fourteen in three months, his favorite color is blue, he likes cats, he’s colorblind, and he brought bread. Dream and Sapnap have obviously already attached themselves to their new friend, and the kid looks so mystified about the whole thing that it doesn’t take long for Bad to melt. 

And over the next few days Bad learns, on his own, that George has quick fingers and a sharp wit and an archer’s callouses. He’s nervous in a way that he desperately tries to hide and flinches at sudden sounds and raised voices, and he’s quiet and self-contained in a way that Dream and Sapnap could never be, not as burning-bright as they are. 

When Sapnap asks George to stay, Bad’s sure he’s never been more proud.

\------------

He accepts the scrap iron pressed into his hands without a word, and carves his name below George’s on the wall. He’s careful with his handwriting. It feels important.

\------------

Bad is eighteen years old, and Skeppy is asking him to leave. He talks all about adventures to be had, and pranks to be done, and promises to make and to keep. 

He says no. 

He says no, because Sapnap is twelve and Dream is fourteen and George is sixteen, and they’ve only just been to their first tournament, and they’ve only just started to make friends with the children in the house on the hill, and he’s not ready to leave the ruins. Not yet. Not while it’s still enough.

Someday he’s going to say yes. That’s a promise that he makes to Skeppy, and he knows that Skeppy’s going to hold him to it. One of these days, he’s going to say yes. 

Just… not yet.

Not yet.


	4. we were here.

Sapnap doesn’t know why he’s back here. 

Maybe it just got… chaotic, back home. Even he can’t thrive on it all the time. Maybe he just needs to see it again. He was sixteen when they left it, and he’s nineteen now. Most people visit home around then, right? That sounds about right. 

It’s just as quiet in the ruins as it always was. The four of them were the noise and laughter and sound, and without them, it’s… hollow. Something was once here, and no longer is. 

It’s easy, here, to remember what they were. Unwanted, unneeded. It’s harder back home (and it’s still weird to think of their new stretch of land as home, but that’s definitely what it is) because back there, they’re… they’re something. They have meaning to that place. People look up to them. Ask them for help and advice, like the three of them, barely adults, are going to know any better. Some are even a little bit scared. 

(They have reason to be, Sapnap thinks, fiddling with the flint and steel in his pocket.)

There’s a bitterness to them, one that Sapnap learned and that he’s never known Dream without, one that presses down on George’s shoulders like a physical weight. It’s even in Bad, in the way that he’s quietly resigned himself to living in and loving a world that will never love him back the same way. 

It’s always there, in the way that Sapnap burns—whether it’s for revenge or safety or just to see some mindless destruction. It’s in the way that Dream fights like a cornered animal and sets up TNT just to watch something explode, in the way that he used to say _promises aren’t real_ with the kind of conviction you can’t argue with. It’s in the way that George sets up glass to shoot for target practice, even though every shattered bottle leaves him shakier than the last until he just can’t take the sound. 

They left a lot behind, here. More than Sapanp thought they did. 

His drawings are still taped to the walls in some places (they’re all awful, but hey, he was like eight), alongside a few of George’s old wanted posters. There’s a chest full of Bad’s old threadbare blankets—all of the scratchy ones, because they took the favorites with them when they left. Their old, rickety crafting tables still stand in the corners, alongside furnaces smeared with coal dust. Old wooden tools sit next to rusted iron ones, simple and messily homemade. 

He walks by the crumbled towers, hopping up and balancing on the old walls like they used to. He finds what he’s looking for without much trouble—a great stretch of stone wall, only partially overgrown. 

He runs his hands along the grooves in the stone, still as clear as they day they were carved.

_SAPNAP_   
_dream!!!_   
_George???_   
_Bad!_

Four different handwritings, four different names. 

_WE WERE HERE_ is large and scrawling underneath, and Sapnap can still feel the scrap iron in his hands, fingertips rubbed raw as he brushed away stray bits of rock and dust to make sure the message was as clear as possible. 

They were four kids that were _wanted,_ even if it was only by each other. 

_No one wants us,_ Dream had said—years and years ago, up in a tall tree, monsters all around them, when they were nine and seven and free and scared out of their minds. _No one ever will._

And Dream’s right about a lot of things—experience says he’s usually right. 

But... not about this. And Sapnap’s never been happier to know that Dream was wrong. 

(He doesn’t bring it up, though. Dream already knows. Knew it when he carved his name right below Sapnap’s, knew it when they brought George home with them and he stayed and kept staying. Knew it when Bad went out and got him that old white mask he still has, the one Sapnap painted, even though it’s way too small and he has a new one now, identical to the first. Knew it when they left home and it felt like leaving a little bit of their souls behind. Dream knows he was wrong.)

There are other carvings, too, more faded over time. A huge _GEORGE SUCKS_ decorates one wall. _GEORGE_ is scratched out to say _SAPNAP_ underneath it, scratched out to say _GEORGE,_ scratched out to say _SAPNAP,_ over and over again until there’s no more room and the names become indecipherably small. The same smiley face is drawn over and over again on another wall. _SKEPPY WAS HERE TOO_ is along the side of a tower. 

None of them are quite as important as the names. _Proof that I exist,_ he’d said, years ago, eleven years old and feeling like a wavering candle flame. Like if he didn’t burn and burn and burn he’d just wink out of existence, along with everyone he tried to hold close. 

They did it, though. They’re a lot more solid than they used to be, furious and cheerful and bitter and laughing and powerful. The world didn’t want them so they wanted each other, and that was enough. It’s still enough. 

He moves on from the wall, to one of the crumbling towers, one of their rain-shelters. There’s a chest of papers. Mostly more old drawings, abandoned to-do lists and grocery lists and notes. There’s a few old photographs buried at the bottom—he can’t believe they forgot these, they hardly ever had access to a camera. 

One of them was taken by Bad, just before their first tournament. They’re posing for the camera, holding up various deadly weapons in the air. It... looked a lot cooler when he was twelve. Another is a huge group photo, all four of them plus Techno, Tommy, and Wilbur, taken by Phil at another tournament. It took forever to get a picture where one of them wasn’t blinking. Another, older photo was sneakily taken—probably by Dream—because it’s of a much younger Sapnap and Bad, laughing, sitting on one of the high walls. He takes all three and puts them in his bag, careful not to crease them.

And there, in the next chest, is an old stuffed panda bear. Sapnap gasps, quietly and without really meaning to, and gingerly takes it out. The fur hasn’t been soft in years, and one of the button eyes is nearly falling out, but it’s—it’s okay. (He thought he’d lost it forever ago, years ago, thought it was trampled in the forest somewhere or drowned in a lake, had mourned it like a lost friend.) 

He clutches it, just for a second, because he’s the only person around for at least half a mile, before he gently places it in his bag next to the photographs. 

He sits there in their old rain-shelter for a long moment. The grass is cool under the shade of the collapsed tower, only barren in a small, blackened patch where they used to set up their fire. 

He has to go back home soon. Dream and George are waiting for him, probably have another adventure up their sleeves. It’ll be wild, and it’ll be dangerous, and it’ll be fun, just like it always is. 

For now though, he watches the dappled sunlight slowly fade from their childhood home, and breathes.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you all enjoyed ! <3


End file.
